Paul Jaboulet Aine Hermitage La Chapelle 2019

Last year, I giddily speculated whether the 2019 Hermitage La Chapelle would warrant a 100-point score. While close—and I wouldn't completely discount it reaching that pinnacle in another decade or two—I'm not sure this wine is as good as I thought. It boasts exciting aromas of roasted meat, mocha, crushed stone, plum and cassis on the nose. It's full-bodied, concentrated, richly tannic and velvety in texture. It's long and complex on the finish, adding hints of cracked pepper and salted licorice. And yet, as much as I enjoyed tasting it and as undeniably great it is, angels didn't sing from the heavens. Maybe next bottle.

The 2019 Hermitage La Chapelle isn't going to match recent vintages, yet it's unquestionably a beautiful wine. It's also the first vintage where the estate has utilized concrete tanks for part of the aging as well, and it was brought up mostly in used barrels, with 15-20% new, and 10% in concrete. Its deep purple hue is followed by a concentrated, powerful, full-bodied effort that has impressive mid-palate depth as well as classic Hermitage notes of graphite, blackberries, cured meats, chocolate, and beautiful minerality. It stays tight and compact on the palate, with beautiful ripeness and enough tannins to warrant 5-6 years of bottle age.

The flagship bottling of Hermitage “La Chapelle” from Caroline Frey is treated the same as the La Maison Bleue in the cellars, but the fruit for this bottling hails from different lieux à dits on the hill: mostly from Le Méal and Les Bessards, with smaller portions of the blend from parcels in Les Rocoules and Les Greffeiux. Like the La Maison Bleue bottling in 2019, the La Chapelle was raised in fifteen percent new oak (both barriques and demi-muids) for eighteen months and comes in listed at 15.5 percent octane in this vintage, despite Madame Frey and her team at Jaboulet being one of the earliest harvesters on the hill of Hermitage each year. The wine is clearly a legend in the making, showing no signs of sur maturité in its complex and sappy nose of sweet dark berries and cassis, pepper, roasted venison, woodsmoke, stony soil tones, violets and just a hint of oak. On the palate the wine is deep, full-bodied and very pure, with bottomless depth at the core, ripe, firm tannins, excellent balance and focus and a long, nascently complex and utterly seamless finish. This is certainly a big wine, but it is so impeccably balanced that one does not have the sense of either power or muscle, but rather simply incredible depth and intensity of flavor. It is most assuredly not hot on the palate!

A big, rich wine with intense fruit, showing blackberry, black olive and black truffle character. Full-bodied and layered with chewy tannins that are soft and juicy. It’s a little warm on the finish. Yet, the decadence is so attractive and the phenolics keep it in line. This is very solid. Try after 2024.